One Blood

*I received a free advance copy from NetGalley.

This book is POW-ER-FUL. It's been a minute since a book made me tear up once, much less multiple times, but "One Blood" by Denene Millner had me feeling all the feels. Separated into three sections, one for each of the main characters from each generation of women in this family, Millner shows you three generations of strength, perseverance, and survival amid friendships, families, mental health struggles, cheating, marital struggles, women who can't have children, women who don't want children, and so much more. Throughout each of the three sections, I was thoroughly rooting for each of these women; I felt deeply engaged by and interested in each one. There's something really special, at times magical, about their bond through the years and how it plays out in so many different ways. I cannot recommend this book enough.

A book of the generations going back to just after the emancipation. MawMaw was a first generation who still followed as the women before her and was a midwife serving the white socialites as well as family. She went to the river daily to pray to the ancestors for guidance. She also had visions of things that were to happen like the next baby to be born she had to prepare for. She was training her granddaughter, Grace, as Graces mom, Bassey, wants no part of this life she always wants better. Bassey lives her life trying to marry better.. she endures much mental and physical abuse along the way. In the end she is beaten to death over a misspoken word. Most women and men, too for that manner found a woman’s only self worth was tied to having babies, keeping a spotless house and pleasuring him. That is until one challenged to be different. Always the scholar, she received a Gallery scholarship to a community college and a grant for college. She broke the cycle somewhat except she had a baby at home and a husband who quit work when he found out the wife was pregnant..he didn’t watch the kid or do any housework. He spent his days writing at the park. Needless to say that marriage went sideways. Special thanks to #NetGalley, #McMillanPress , #DoneneMillner, #OneBlood, Publication Date::September 05,2023. I would recommend, while I know it is a work of fiction, it is also a collage of the black experience and was very informative for me

Description
Homegoing meets The Mothers where three women are tied together by blood, love, and family secrets in this searing novel by New York Times bestseller Denene Millner.

Potent, poetic, powerful, told with deep love, and spanning from the Great Migration to the civil unrest of the 1960s to the quest for women’s equality in early 2000s, Denene Millner’s beautifully wrought novel explores three women’s intimate struggle with generational trauma and healing.

My Review:
There is power in the blood. One sees examples of this in speculative fiction or in the gospel songs of Jesus' crucifixion. In current context, the world just witnessed a Royal succession, which only came about through the accident of birth, aka the bloodline. This book provides much of the same through the matrilineal line of Black women trying to survive and love in America. With nods toward hoodoo to Christian conversion to high societal expectations, one truth remains: you cannot escape the truth of blood.

This book is perfect for book club discussions.

I am a huge fan of Denene Millner from way back in her My Brown Baby blog days. She's since written Soo many books and articles. I love her! This novel showcases the strength, beauty,and hard times of being a Black woman in America. More in depth, Black the mother-daughter relationship is examined in an authentic way.

Thank you NetGalley for the eARC. This book was so touching! The generational storyline was riveting and i could not stop reading it! I felt for all the women ! Ans i could not stop thinking this should have been a movie! Kudos!

Oof, this is a seriously intense and emotional story, but so compellingly told. Told through the experiences of three women - Grace, LoLo, and Rae - it chronicles the ties of family and motherhood as Black women and the ways intergenerational trauma ripples and impacts people moving forward.

Grace is a teen when her mother is murdered by her boyfriend and her grandmother is taken away for claiming a white woman’s baby was white and not a product of an affair with a Black man on the birth certificate, leading to her being sent to New York to live with her great aunt. Living in Virginia, even though it was Jim Crow and everything was segregated, Grace had always known love and care, but moving in with Aunt Hattie she was suddenly seen as a burden, unworthy, best unseen and unheard. When she meets Dale, he sees her, but due to their difference in social status no one would allow them to be together. After a stolen night together, Grace becomes pregnant and she’s able to hide it through most of the pregnancy, but when her aunt realizes she spews so much ugliness and plans to send Grace away to one of those places where she can quietly give birth and the baby will be given up for adoption. Before she can be sent away, though, she has the baby, knowing what to do from having helped her MawMaw catch babies before. While Grace slept off the stress of birth, Hattie took the baby away, but not before making a petition to the ancestors for Grace that the baby would be protected and loved.

The next part follows LoLo, a woman who wants to be loved and wanted and thinks she’s found the perfect man in Tommy, but he wants a family and LoLo cannot have babies after she had an abortion as a teen and the nurse who did the procedure forcibly sterilized her. She keeps this from Tommy, and convinces him that he’s the reason pregnancy isn’t occurring. Through church, though, they learn of efforts to adopt our babies, and that’s their solution to still have their family, and they adopt TJ and Rae as babies. LoLo loves her family, but she is also sometimes abusive and cruel and disconnected from her children, especially as the weight of being a mother and a wife and a homemaker weighs on her more and more, leaving her feeling shackled to a life that is slowly draining her life.

The final part tells Rae’s story after she gets pregnant with her own daughter and is navigating her full-time job, a husband who quit his job while she was pregnant to pursue his dream of being a full-time writer, and the stress of being a Black mother in America.

There are so many layers and nuances to the story being told. So much of it was heartbreaking as the things these women went through trickled down into how they treated their children. I feel like this is such an impactful story obviously told with heart but also feels unflinching and rough.

It’s hard to say I liked One Blood because it was so rough, but then the ending is so full of love and care. And seeing how time changes someone in how LoLo was a rough mother but when it came to her granddaughter, she had softness to spare. And seeing the relationship between LoLo and Rae change after Rae is grown and a mother herself. I liked the complexity and interpersonal dynamics shown.

I will say that I did struggle some with the time shifts because there’d be recollections and then transition back to present, and I couldn’t always tell where those transitions were taking place. It was an element I enjoyed and the omniscient aspect of the storytelling definitely added to the layers for me.

Overall this a book I would definitely recommend picking up, though do mind content warnings. In the end it is a story of the power and love of family, but also a story of how much it costs to be a Black woman, a Black mother in America, even states like New York that like to pretend that racism never existed there like the South.

[Cannonball Review will post Sept 2, 2023]

There was so much to digest with this book. It was broken up into three books spanning several decades. It told a story of women that society tried to throw away and sometimes succeeded. There were many triggers in this book so check the trigger warnings. I enjoyed the book of Grace and am still haunted by her experience. The children in this book were treated cruel and it was heart breaking. The following books show how family trauma follows bloodlines and the harm it causes if left unchecked. I will say half way through this book was extremely draining. So much happened to these women yet their stories were in some ways familiar. I recommend this book but be prepared to become attached to these characters. It will not be a book I will forget anytime soon.

A beautiful and heart wrenching tale about family and what it means to belong and how generational curses effect everyone differently.